The cattle growth, production and processing industry comprises four major components, producers, feedlots, packing plants and wholesalers/retailers. The cattle producers maintain cowherds. The herds produce calves that are raised and grown on pasture grazing land, much of which is unsuitable for cultivation. The calves are grown to a certain size, after which they are moved to a confined feedlot. Cattle are then processed for consumers at packing plants.
A. Feedlots
Feedlots generally care for thousands of head of cattle or other ruminants (ruminants are cud chewing, quadruped hoofed mammals of the suborder Ruminantia, and include domestic cattle, sheep, goats, bison, buffalo, deer, and antelopes) at once in various stages of growth. These animals come from a variety of sources with widely varying previous care and feeding performance history. Cattle within a feedlot are physically contained in cattle pens, each pen typically having a feed bunk to receive feed, a water source for drinking and manually-operated gates to enter and exit the pens. A feedlot typically includes: (a) a receiving area where cattle are contained upon their arrival at the feedlot; (b) a processing area where cattle, shortly after their arrival, are tagged, weighed and given health care and growth promotant products; (c) a hospital area where individual animals that are ill or otherwise in need of treatment can be medicated or otherwise treated and returned to their pens; and (d) a shipping area where cattle are prepared for shipment to a packing plant for slaughter.
Although feedlot sizes range from a onetime capacity of a few heads to a capacity of over one-hundred-thousand head, the trend in North America is towards large feedlots in the ten thousand to one-hundred-thousand head capacity. These larger feedlots feed the majority of feedlot-fed cattle in North America intended for beef consumption.
The owners of particular cattle in a feedlot are defined by a unique lot number. The number of cattle in a lot may vary, and an owner may own a portion of a lot, a portion of multiple lots, or all of one or more lots. Each lot may occupy one or multiple pens. Animals also may each be identified by a unique individual number.
Proper care for animals in a large feedlot is a complex and time-consuming task because of, for example, feeding, water supply, insect control, and individual or group treatment requirements. Treatments may include group treatments where various medications are added to the feed, or individual treatments that are applied topically, orally, by injection or by implantation to selected individual or groups of animals.
Regular sorting of animals also occurs. Animals at a feedlot may be moved individually and in groups several times during the several-month period each animal is kept in the feedlot. This movement of animals from their home pen to other pens, from a home pen to a treatment area and later return, and from several pens into a common pen, is necessary for the proper care and maintenance of the animals.
Feedlots assess various charges to owners for the care and maintenance of their animals. These charges typically are assessed by lot number at periodic intervals based on feedlot care and maintenance records, not on an individual animal basis (except for individual hospital treatments). Examples of assessed charges include ration charges in dollars-per-ton, health care and growth promotion product charges, a daily yardage fee per head, and handling charges.
Within the feedlot cattle population, there is tremendous diversity in individual animal characteristics, such as weight, frame size, muscling, fat content and deposition rate, breed type, rate of gain, feed efficiency, intramuscular fat (marbling), sex, age, health and drug treatments, nutrition and growth history, and other factors. The diverse beef cattle population results in an extremely variable beef product for the consumer in terms of eating quality, fatness, tenderness, size of cuts and other factors. It has been a primary goal of the beef industry associations to improve the quality and uniformity of beef for the American consumer for many years. The 1991 Beef Quality Audit identified approximately $280 per head being wasted, of which more than $150.00 was excess fat.
In order to improve the current beef product, it is first necessary that the current diverse cattle population is managed for optimum efficiency and desired carcass cut out quality and value for the consumer. Second, ultimately the genetic make up of the producer cowherd must be changed. The livestock industry has tried for years, with limited success, to improve the genetics of the cattle population to produce the types of animals that will yield a high percentage of lean meat with a low percentage of fat efficiently, and also provide a desirable and also provide a desirable eating quality for the consumer. However, there has been no effective way for large feedlots to: (a) measure and sort animals individually; (b) keep accurate and complete records of live physical characteristics and charges for each animal; or (c) produce an economic end point determination for each animal using growth performance data. There also has there been no effective way to match growth performance data to end-product carcass data for each animal from slaughtering operations that would enable a correlation between carcass value and live animal performance and measured characteristics so as to help identify superior genetic types for future breeding and management purposes, and to identify management practices that will maximize the value of the arrival in the market.
Based on the above, there clearly is a need to be able to measure and track the physical and performance characteristics of each animal during its residence in the feedlot for determining an optimum marketing date. Ideally, the physical and growth characteristics of each animal should be known at every stage of its stay in the feedlot in order to determine when the animal should be slaughtered for optimum growth efficiency and value of the carcass based upon a carcass grading target and market conditions.
There also is a need for a method for obtaining yield and grade information for each animal as soon as it is processed at a packing plant. This information would further help feedlot operators better determine how to manage cattle at feedlots and help producers to improve genetics. Currently, grading information is based generally on government grading, which is done solely by visual inspection with intermittent checks by manual measurements. Actual yield and quality grade information for each animal processed by a packing plant is not available until the government grading has been completed, which typically is two or more days after an animal has been processed by the packing plant. Sometimes rib eye tracings also are used for grading, but these tracings take from several hours to several days to obtain and analyze following the typical two-day grading delay. Real time information from the packing plant prior to processing each animal to a carcass concerning each animal's yield and quality grade has heretofore not been available.
Methods and systems used prior to the present invention have been too inaccurate or lack the capability to identify and track characteristics of performance and charges on an individual animal basis. Additionally, they have been too labor intensive and too injurious to animals, and have required skill levels not readily available in feedlots or packing plants. Some of these prior known methods and systems are discussed below.
Pratt U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,733,971, issued Mar. 29, 1988, 4,889,433, issued Dec. 26, 1989, 4,815,042, issued Mar. 21, 1989, 5,219,224, issued Jun. 15, 1993, and 5,340,211, issued Aug. 23, 1994, address the problem of delivering feed additives into animal feed rations in a feedlot accurately and on a customized basis at the time of feeding. Pratt U.S. Pat. No. 5,008,821, issued Apr. 16, 1991, addresses the problem of determining accurately the amount of feed ration to deliver to a particular pen of animals at each feeding. Pratt U.S. Pat. No. 5,315,505, issued May 24, 1994, addresses the problem of keeping track of drug inventories, drugs administered to particular animals, and animal health histories in a cattle feedlot, and determining what drugs or combinations thereof should be administered, and in what dosages, to a particular animal diagnosed with a specific illness.
While the foregoing patents address important aspects of cattle management in a feedlot, they do not address the broader aspect of how, when and how often to measure, sort, feed and treat animals in a feedlot, how long to feed them, and how and when to select them for shipment from the feedlot.
Hayes U.S. Pat. No. 4,745,472, issued May 17, 1988, and others, have proposed ways to accurately measure an animal's external dimensions by scanning using video imaging techniques. Similarly, ultrasound backfat measurement of cattle is known, at least on an experimental basis, from the work of Professor John Brethour of Kansas State University's Fort Hayes Experimental Station, as explained in an article entitled "Cattle Sorting Enters a New Age" appearing at pages 1-5 and 8 of the Sep., 1994 issue of D.J. FEEDER MANAGEMENT. Professor Brethour has, on an experimental basis, used the data from such measurements to project an estimated optimum shipping or end date for the measured animals.
Various methods for sorting and weighing cattle have been known or proposed, as disclosed, for example, in Linseth U.S. Pat. No. 4,288,856, Hayes U.S. Pat. No. 4,617,876, and Ostermann U.S. Pat. No. 4,280,448. Cattle Scanning Systems of Rapid City, S. Dak., markets a computerized video imaging and sorting system that includes weighing and scanning external dimensions of each animal, assigning a frame score and muscle score to the animal based on such dimensions, calculating a predicted optimal end weight and marketing date from the composite score and current weight data, and then sorting the animals for feeding according to their optimal marketing dates.
Recently, Brethour has suggested using data from ultrasound backfat measurement of individual animals, 60-80 days into a feeding period, and a computer modeling program, to physically sort cattle into groups according to projected marketing dates as they are measured, apparently based on the ultrasound-generated data alone. Pratt U.S. Pat. No. 5,573,002, which is incorporated herein by reference, describes an ultrasound device useful for making internal tissue measurements of feed animals. Pratt '002 patent describes a device and method particularly useful for making tissue measurements on live animals restrained in a stall. Pratt U.S. Pat. No. 5,836,880, also incorporated herein by reference, describes an automated version of an ultrasound tissue analyzer useful for analyzing internal tissue characteristics in animals. Both of Pratt's prior applications are primarily concerned with making tissue analyses on animals at a feedlot.
Hayes U.S. Pat. No. 4,617,876 discloses a computerized system for controlling, by weight, the movement and location of individual animals within one or multiple pens in a feedlot using a system of animal watering and weighing stalls and electronic ear tags to identify each animal. The weight of an animal as measured within the stall determines where the animal is routed within sections of a pen or among multiple pens. Although the Hayes '876 patent suggests generally that criteria other than weight may be used to control the operation of a stall exit gate and other gates to route an animal to a desired location, it does not suggest how such other criteria could be efficiently obtained, or that such criteria could be used to determine an animal's economic and physical performance and value, or to improve future feedlot management practices or future breeding and selection practices. Nor does Hayes '876 suggest that combinations of two or more criteria may be used to route an animal or determine its location within multiple pens or other areas.
The Linseth patent discloses a computerized method of sorting animals in a feedlot according to weight gain. Each incoming animal is identified and weighed in a walk-through scale, and its identification and weight are recorded. At a later date, each animal is reweighed in the walk-through scale and its weight gain is determined. From this determination, the animals are sorted into pens according to weight gain, and underperforming animals are culled from the group.
B. Packing Plant
After their stay at feedlots, ruminants are processed at a packing plant. At the packing plant, the animal is first stunned. The stunned animal is then picked up by an overhead trolley using a leg shackle and bled. The trolley can move as many as 400 hundred cattle per hour to other locations in the packing plant for processing into carcasses. Carcasses are formed by removing the feet, hide, viscera, head and tails. The carcasses are then conveyed to coolers for storage and subsequent grading by inspectors.
As discussed above, cattle currently are graded at the packing plant only after processing into carcasses and chilled, which takes at least forty-eight hours. The grade of the meat produced by particular cattle is judged subjectively by a government grader. The government grader has only a few seconds to visually inspect the carcass and assign a grade. This inspection may be done as the carcass is conveyed past the inspector. The grading also may be supplemented using other measurements, such as a rib eye muscle trace. This involves actually tracing the rib eye muscle with tracing paper. This tracing is then taken elsewhere to either manually calculate the rib eye area, or to use a machine to view the tracing paper and provide a determination as to the rib eye muscle area.
There are a number of problems associated with the current grading system, including: (a) differences in grading between graders; (b) animals that are either substantially better than average or substantially worse than average tend to be graded closer to average by visual inspection methods by all inspectors than is justified; (c) the process of removing the animal's hide during processing to form a carcass also removes some of the backfat, which commonly distorts backfat measurements and thus the true yield grading of the meat produced from a ruminant animal. Furthermore, the quality and yield grade results obtained at the packing plant for each animal determines the price paid for a particular animal for those receiving income for raising the animal, processing the animal at the feed lot and for processing the animal at the packing plant. Using conventional systems known prior to the present invention, data for a processed animal is not available until after the carcass has been formed and graded by the government grader. This delays determining the price-per-animal and paying those in the processing line, such as the ranchers and feedlot operators, for the value of the animal. Currently, packing plant operators do not pay feedlot operators on the basis of individual animal measurements made at the feedlot, but instead make payments based on individual carcass grades at the packing plant. As a result, payment to the feedlot is delayed for at least two days.
Packing plant operators also do not have a good inventory classification until the grading information is provided. This makes it difficult to plan inventory distribution and future buying decisions.
None of the known methods or systems use more than two criteria for selecting, sorting or predicting an optimal marketing date. Also, none teaches or suggests a way in which such prior methods or systems might be integrated into a total system of cattle management for maximum economic return to the feedlot and the producer, and for optimum use of the accumulated data for each animal to determine production costs of each animal and to improve the genetics of future breeding stocks.
Thus, while many methods for measuring and selecting cattle in feedlots have been tried, both visual and automated, none have been successful in accomplishing the desired end-result. That end-result is the ability to select a given animal for shipment from the feedlot to the packing plant at the optimum time, considering the animal's condition, performance and market factors, the ability to grow the animal to its optimum individual potential of physical and economic performance, and the ability to record and preserve each animal's performance history in the feedlot and carcass data from the packing plant for use in cultivating and managing current and future animals for meat production. The beef industry is extremely concerned with its decreasing market share relative to pork and poultry. Yet to date, it has been unable to devise a system or method to accomplish on a large scale what is needed to manage the current diversity of cattle to improve the beef product quality and uniformity fast enough to remain competitive in the race for the consumer dollar spent on meat.